Cirque du Soleil’s big top confidential

Running away with the circus isn’t all gravy you know. Guilhem, one of the Cirque du Soleil troupe actually refers to it as a “life of hard labour”.

Created as part of a bigger campaign promoting the current run of their show TOTEM at The Hague, Netherlands, the three documentaries, Trapeze Artist, Contortionist and Rollerskating Couple, were released on Dutch online magazine Linda.nl and reveal the dedication and punishing training regimes behind the scenes of the eye-popping show.

A contortionist from Mongolia, Oyun-Erdene, reveals the reality of spending most of one’s life on tour. “You live out of a suitcase, you don’t own anything. Not a plate or a fork.” Judging by the woman’s unholy bendiness she doesn’t appear to own a spine, or any rigid bones, either.

Guilhem talks of the three to four hours of daily training required to produce just six minutes of the show! But his film is, literally, uplifting, as he displays the kind of profoundly philosophical bent one might not expect from a trapeze artist – “we are lucky,” he says, “we are suffering for something good, to make people feel good, when so many people suffer for nothing. It’s a privilege for sure.” Beautiful words, from a beautiful person.

Romantic rollerskating acrobat Massimo, is all about the love – he explains the rigours of displaying his tender affections for his rollerskating wife Denise, while fighting extreme giddiness produced by whizzing round in circles.